THE POWERS · THE GREATWOOD
The Rootbound
The Greenwake's radicals who let too much of the wild into themselves — feral land-wardens half-merged with the Greatwood, who hold the deep forest by tooth, root, and rot.
The Rootbound are Greenwake wardens who stopped drawing a line between themselves and the wood. Where the parent guild tends and harvests, the Rootbound have gone half-feral: skin gone to bark, hair to moss, some of them barely able to leave the grove they've grown into. Their mysticism is the living land itself — they read root and rain and the slow politics of rot, and they treat the Greatwood as territory to be held, not shared. They run off loggers, charcoal-burners, and salvage crews; they tax or ambush anyone cutting deep timber; and they trade forest goods (rare resin, drug-saps, healing barks, and any old crystal or relic they dig out of a root-hollow) to outside buyers for the coin and tools they can't grow. The Wardens treat them with grief and caution, the way you'd treat a friend who walked into deep water on purpose and is still, technically, swimming.
KIND
cell
PARENT GUILD
The Greenwake
CREED
The deep wood is ours to hold
RELIC STANCE
Old crystal and relics turned up in a root-hollow are just dug-up goods — traded to outside buyers for coin, tools, and metal the forest can't provide.
Connected
Type Fields
All Relationships (15)
member_of
- →The Greenwake — The radicals merging with the wood.
- ←Sorrel, Who Is Rooting — Sorrel is well into rooting.
- →The Greenwake — The Rootbound were wardens — they are still Greenwake at root, though they've gone further than Esk would have allowed.
- ←Sorrel's Glade — Sorrel's Glade is the Rootbound's living demonstration — the end of the road they advocate, worn by Sorrel in plain sight.
rival_of
- →The Cullers — Return vs clean-kill — the Greenwake's fault line.
- ←The Sap-Drinkers — Wake-keepers who drank the sap they were sworn to hoard; the wardens wall their galleries off and won't call them dead.
references
- ←Warden Esk of the Oak — Esk grieves and watches the Rootbound.
- ←quest.the-dying-beast (unresolved) — Or the full return.
- →The Rotcrown Stag — The Rootbound want the stag knelt where it falls, so its echo fades into green and a glade grows from the cost.
- ←A Culler's Tally — The tally argues against the Rootbound's 'wait, the wood will take it back.'
- ←The Amber Sap — The Rootbound hoard the amber sap as the wood's sacred last-gift from a rooting warden — the source of their reverence and the Sap-Drinkers' heresy.
- →The Quiet Stone — The Rootbound come to the Hush-Stone to remember what silence feels like — part of their practice before a rooting walk.
- ←The Greywood — The Rootbound sit at the Greywood's boundary, betting the wood will take the rot back if left alone — their argument against the Cullers.
guards
- →The Rootbound Hollow — The Rootbound keep the giving-dark, warding the sap-caches and the dead wound into the wood.
descendant_of
- ←The Sap-Drinkers — The Sap-Drinkers are a Rootbound heresy — they drank the sap the Rootbound only hoarded and called it a cure.
This world ships in Valenfeld. Play the game →